Perfect and blue.
She peered through the mesmerizing, magical cosmos that swirled within the little crystal orb between her fingertips, almost with the same fascination she had all of those years ago, discovering some proto-form of the blue gemstone in a Piltovan well-to-do's workshop.
Almost the same...
Jinx cradled her head in her other hand, cushioning it against the thick wooden beam she lay upon. Her immense blue hair was bound into long, tight braids that had grown to measure the length of her entire body; at their tips, the hair was half as old as she was. They faintly tugged against her scalp as they hung down into the empty space beneath her ceiling perch.
At times, this dusty spot felt like her home. She supposed most people considered the place they slept to be their home, but she didn't so much figure that most people would be able to sleep where she did. If nothing else, she was sentimental enough about the bar downstairs that the ceiling rafters of its upstairs office felt home enough, most of the time. The very height of the position also benefitted her, in that it allowed her to observe the dealings taking place below from a concealed vantage.
"—Did waste a perfectly good night of gambling, though," a hoarse female voice spoke from beneath her, "I was up for the second time this week."
An older male voice hummed indifferently in response.
"Kid held his own, though, whoever he was," she continued, "only cut the crap once I'd stepped up on him. Guess he didn't feel like finding out where that would've gone—"
Jinx rolled over lazily, gazing down at their conversation. Sevika sure did like to talk her boss' ear off. She held her blue gemstone out and placed it over Sevika's head; given the forced perspective it appeared roughly the same size.
'What an improvement that'd be,' she thought, to entertain herself. The two of them had found themselves at odds often enough over the years that she was sure Sevika wouldn't much mind having her somehow turned inanimate either, if not see her disappear altogether.
Of course, Jinx had also developed something of a skill in seeing that woman be deprived of her wishes, and she was hardly ever reluctant to exercise it.
She shared a secret smirk with herself before glancing over at Silco, who looked to be penning a letter of some sort while he pretended to listen to his second-in-command's tale. His had become a familiar sight; so much so, that often she'd privately make a game of attempting to determine his mood by the attitude of his pen strokes. Though, she found that her guesses were wrong as often as they were right; he had a way of hiding himself, even from her. She envied him for it.
Silco impatiently tapped at the end of the page. "The trouble-causer was dealt with, then?" he prompted Sevika.
"Ah— I figured I'd just let him move along," she replied, leaning back and exhaling smoke through her lips. "Kid just struck me as some punk, weird looking hair and all."
Silco's briefly spared attention had since returned to his letter. A long forefinger rested upon his colorless, scarred lips while he sat with his thoughts; Jinx had to imagine that some of them must have involved wondering why he'd bothered letting Sevika sit down in the first place. At least, she often hoped so; plotting seemed a lot simpler when it was only the two of them, and his attention felt far sweeter when undivided.
She found it difficult in that moment not to cast her mind back to the previous week, when her head had been a maelstrom of noise that it seemed nothing would be able to make quiet. He'd heard her anguish then; he'd brought her to the tide docks, and waded with her into that icy sea, leading her by the hand. She remembered the cold sting of those waters as they caressed her face, of holding her breath and being submerged in their murk. But she'd trusted him in that moment; it had felt like they were going under together, and when he'd lifted her back up and she could see the night sky again, her mind had felt clearer, as though the louder parts had simply washed away.
"What did you see?" he'd asked her.
She'd expected to have seen her sister, wearing the rageful expression that tormented her dreams. Only, she hadn't.
"I saw… Jinx," she'd answered. "I saw me."
He'd nodded, and she'd realized then, peering into the darkened, damaged remnant of his left eye, why her reflection in it had always felt so pure; the loss they both carried was the same, as were the betrayals they'd each suffered, only in different times. He was her mirror, and she his.
Everybody else was a distraction.
"—Anyway," she heard Sevika continue to prattle on from down below, "we should probably do something about the riff-raff bothering the workers in the smelting district—"
"On the contrary," Silco declared, turning in his chair to face her for the first time in the conversation. "Those sorts of petty domestic matters won't demand our attention for some time."
His gaze remained upon the letter he'd since finished writing. He held it decisively before his own eyes, as though admiring his work.
"Our world is about to change," he continued. "Our foremost priority now ought be to ensure that we don't spread ourselves too thin."
It amused her to see Sevika's expression ping-pong between faith and doubt.
He knows what he's doing, you ogre…
"Sir— do you really think now's the time for all that?" she objected. "After the fiasco that girl of yours caused Topside, which Marcus was barely able to smooth over for us because we still have the gold to pay him—"
"I'd gladly pay a thousandtimes what it cost us for the prize that she retrieved," Silco shot back, causing the woman to fall into a silent glower.
A strand of his otherwise well-kept hair had fallen over his face. He pulled it back before speaking again.
"I trust you understand what needs to be done, Sevika," he reiterated.
The conflict in her eyes remained, but she nodded with an affirmative grunt, leaving to go carry out whatever it was that he'd impressed upon her to do.
After the door closed, he closed his eyes and let out a kind of meditative exhale. When he opened them, his eye immediately found hers. He silently outstretched his hand toward her, beckoning her down from her hideout in the rafters. His expression was warm; inviting, and she knew they had much to discuss.
She acquiesced, lowering herself slowly until her toes hovered a few feet above the surface of the desk which had once loomed so large, when she'd been younger. She dropped down the rest of the way and made her seat upon his open ledgers and manifests, knowing he'd make no protest.
"Sevika got herself in a fight, huh?" she wondered, bathing in the warmth of the light that shone through the room's great round window, tinting her pale skin in the color of sea-glass.
He quietly hummed in reply, giving her a curious look-over. It almost prompted her to check that there wasn't in fact anything on her face, before he finally did speak.
"I do distinctly recall warning her against bringing such banalities to me, particularly now of all times…" He shook his head slightly. "She'll understand, soon…"
"You ask me, she's been begging to get pink-slipped for years," she quipped, though she knew she was hardly joking.
He might have picked up on it, as his expression grew serious. "Jinx… regardless of whether you enjoy her, we need people like her; people who believe in our cause." He quietly sighed. "Frankly, it feels as though many are beginning to forget…"
"I guess," she replied, making a face. "Still, Sevika's the kind who you'll hand a simple task but she'll somehow make it a—"
"—I've heard it, Jinx," he suddenly cut in, with a curtness to his voice. "Please don't raise the matter again."
Her mouth tightened a little, as she was reminded of the kinds of old, bitter feelings that would overcome her whenever Silco had benched her from action in the past, in favor of that woman. She fell into a silent pout, but felt him studying her face through it all. Often it would mean that he was formulating some speech that she'd have to pretend to find reassuring…
"Would you show it to me, again?" he asked instead.
She found herself chewing at her bottom lip as she presented the gemstone to him, the way she would whenever she felt anxious. It might have been irrational; he'd said it himself, it was worth a thousand times whatever headache she'd caused him, scoring it from that fancy-schmancy science lab in Piltover. And not only did she obtain it, but with their research notes she'd harnessed it, too. She'd cracked Topside's crowning invention; evened the playing field, maybe for the first time ever. She'd been the one to give that to him.
The doubt sometimes just crept up on her out of nowhere…
His contented hum upon receiving her gift for the second time went some way to silence it, but as he glanced back at her, it was almost as though he could read her thoughts. He moved his chair closer to the edge of the desk and reassuringly gave her fingers a squeeze.
"How we proceed from here will decide the fate of Zaun, Jinx." He spoke with a softer tone. "We cannot afford to overlook anything…"
A slender finger delicately brushed a stray blue hair from her face while she stared back at him, hanging on his words.
"Which of your ideas do you favor the most, as far as the design of the weapon?" he asked.
Her mood managed to turn around in response to the question; about this, she'd gladly speak at length.
"Well," she began giddily, "first, I was playing around with the idea of some kind of pointed energy beam, because why not?— it's magic, right? Plus, I could totally carve their dumb, fancy Capitol into a giant picture of a monkey face or something!"
She cackled to herself and Silco returned a faint smile.
"—But then I thought, actually, that seemed like the kinda thing that some poindexter from up there would invent, so instead I'm stuck choosing between trying to build a flying-machine I can use to rain Chompers down from above, ooorrrr a big ol' rocket-launcher with a magic-infused payload," she proudly concluded.
Silco leaned back, giving her conundrum some genuine consideration.
"The latter does sound simpler to engineer, no?" he offered. "Less moving parts…? In more than just the literal sense…"
She contemplated what he'd meant by that. She supposed he was being protective; invading Piltover alone by air would seemingly put her at a higher risk of being captured, or whatever, than simply firing a missile from a distance.
She figured she'd be a good daughter for once.
"Okay, Fishbones it is!" she agreed.
He raised an eyebrow, curious of her meaning.
"Oh," she giggled, hoping to temper her own excitement, "the whole scheme I had going so far had a set of metal jaws at the opening of the firing canister 'cause I thought it'd look scary, which ended up turning the entire thing shark-themed… I call him Fishbones."
Silco let out a wisp of a chuckle. "Well, it's very you, isn't it?" he said.
She bobbed back and forth, in satisfaction.
He raised the gemstone up to his eye-line, closing an eye and peering inside of it in the same way that she had. In doing so, she noticed that he'd placed down the letter he'd been working on, so she reached her hand toward it. When he made no objection, she picked it up and gave it a skim-through.
"Your big ultimatum to Topside?" she pestered.
"Mm," he sounded.
She continued down the page. "You've got spots here for the Chem-Barons to put their seals too, huh?" she asked.
"Well, yes— I'd like to quell the potentiality that the very first notable event in an independent Zaun's history should be a hair-trigger civil war between squabbling factions," he explained. "I'd daresay that at least half of them will be opposed to the path we're about to take, but securing some form of agreement from them will save me a future headache, regardless of the carve-outs they'll undoubtedly demand…"
She nodded along. "I can tell you were using your scary voice when you wrote this," she jested.
He appeared to grow disconcerted by the manner in which she was handling the document. "Please don't crease it that way, Jinx," he said, plucking it from her fingers.
She impishly pouted at him in response. "Think you'll come down to the bar tonight?" she wondered.
He placed the gemstone back in her hands, for it to find its home in the pouch on her belt. "I've done myself a grave disservice by not having hired a new bookkeeper as of yet," he sighed, tugging out from under her one of the open ledgers she'd been sitting on. "These will take some time, Jinx."
"Oh, okay…" she frowned. She still hadn't entirely gathered the reason for which he'd sent away his last bookkeeper. She hadn't minded the guy; he was one of the few people under Silco's employ that actually spoke to her. He'd even been a little charming…
Silco glanced at her. "Is Thieram no longer good company…?"
That man was the other that did, though he more bumbling than charming. 'Chuck,' she silently smirked. Part of her wanted to correct the record on the affable bartender's name, but she figured he'd only look at her strangely.
"He's fine company," she snored, hopping up. His eyes were back on his pages.
"Well— if you come on down later, I'll buy you a drink," she called at him on her way out, with some tease in her tone.
He met her remark with the usual wry half-smile that she suspected few others besides her ever saw, not least because it required catching him in a good mood.
She giggled in self-satisfaction and skipped out of the room, shutting the door behind her.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Useless.
It was all he could find it in himself to feel. He defeatedly latched his door and tossed a set of brass keys down onto the entryway table. Dread surged in his stomach as he brought his eyes up to the mirror, his badge being the first thing to catch his eye. He unclasped it and slammed it down onto the table top with ire.
Sheriff…
Marcus pinched his nose between his eyes, trying to imagine another path, trying to imagine what the sheriff of Piltover should look like. He already knew the answer; it looked like the woman whose grave he'd visited just days ago. She'd never have found herself in this situation, with Piltovan blood having been spilled and nearly the entire city calling for trencher heads.
Damn it all…
He opened his eyes again. No— he still held leverage in the situation. Silco had relied on him too often. Why was the man so adamant on protecting his most troublesome miscreant? Attempting to predict who he'd be willing to sell up the river, versus who he'd be sentimental about… Marcus was better off flipping a coin.
His daughter's portrait sat facing him. He sighed, somberly reminding himself that he was all she had, but his mind was suddenly pulled away by an aggressive rapping against his door.
"What is it?" he demanded, to the sight of three of his officers standing urgently at attention outside his door frame.
"Sir!" the highest ranked of them implored, "a foot-chase has developed outside the training barracks— eleven officers down!"
Marcus did his best to compartmentalize the staggering casualty count in his mind, as he reached for his badge and re-pinned it to his chest. His ears finally tracked on to the low wail of the city alarm in the distance.
"Send orders for the bridges to be raised, immediately," he ordered, "and I want every officer on duty with a rifle in their hands this time."
"Yes, sheriff!" the officer complied.
Marcus nodded, hurrying along with his subordinates.
"Do we have descriptions on any of the culprits?" he asked.
"All we've received reports on so far is a slender male in foreign attire," the officer replied.
"Weapons?" he demanded.
"None reported, sir."
Marcus looked on in bewilderment. Surely Silco wasn't foolish enough to have let one of his monstrosities loose to wreak havoc on the citizens of Piltover?
An elevator led the squad down to the ground, where they met up with half the Council Guard, who appeared nonplussed about being called into action in such a manner. "Sir," one of them puzzled, "reports say the altercation began near the Bridge of Progress…"
"And how long ago was that?" he snapped, prompting a look of submission from the guard. Good, he thought; they had no time for squabbling. "You'll remain here on high alert until I report that the threat's been subdued," he ordered, before turning to his troop of enforcers. "Everybody fan out!" he barked. "Apprehend anybody who matches the description!"
The enforcers fastened their helmets, and set off after their phantom target. A few moments later, his junior officer returned with rifles for the both of them.
"Thank you," he grunted, loading a round into the chamber and glancing around them.
The city's alarm had evidently become a less-than-familiar sound over the years to the residents concluding their homeward commutes; he observed startlement turning to panic as armed officers urgently pushed through the frightened crowds. In their hurry, he watched shoulders bump and tempers bristle; he rushed forward to help up a young lady who had fallen.
As she thanked him and scurried off home like he'd urged her, he became wary of the progress of the troop he'd sent off. His junior officer met his side, while the crowd began to finally thin.
"Do you sense anything?" Marcus asked.
"No," his officer replied.
There was something; a twinkle of the light upon the pavement, some yards ahead of them. On approach, it looked to be a metal fragment of something, gold and glinting, just as were the accents on their uniforms.
'Did it fall off of someone?' he wondered, squatting down to examine it, and his junior officer joined him.
The curiosity was to be cut short; both of their eyes bolted up to the sound of a winded shriek, followed by the sight of one of his officers skidding across the pavement and landing on his side, as though he'd been fired out of a cannon.
"Behind me!" Marcus ordered his comrade, priming his rifle and leading them both to the partial cover of an old, vestigial water-well that sat in the centre of the street.
A single gunshot rang out around the corner from which the fallen officer was flung, but nothing more; they were left once again to the repeated growl of the city alarm. Marcus felt at that moment that the sound had gained an eerie edge to it.
'What happened to our numbers?!' he bugged, stepping out from cover to investigate with his junior close behind him.
He moved promptly toward the fallen officer, keeping an eye out for whatever assailant could have inflicted such damage.
"Is he breathing?" Marcus demanded, his voice low.
He didn't hear the answer; down the barrel of his gun, he spotted a slender figure stalk into view at the other end of the street, stopping with their back to them and holding something in their hand. Another unconscious officer lay at the figure's feet.
"Drop that, now!" Marcus bellowed, the barrel of his rifle trained on the creep.
At the sound, the figure straightened up and turned around. They had tall, spiked hair jutting out on either side, almost like horns, and eyes that glimmered a haunting yellow. A sardonic grin crept across their face.
"You won't be warned again— drop the weapon!" Marcus desperately ordered.
The cackle he received in response sounded like it came from a young man, maybe even a teenager. The kid began moving forward to where Marcus could make him out more clearly; his attire was as strangely foreign as had been described, though the skintight black upper garment revealed an intimidating level of musculature. And the object in his hand appeared to be the helmet of the officer laying unconscious and crumpled next to them.
Marcus' breathing grew rapid and sharp, as he prepared to squeeze the trigger.
Again, he heard the kid snicker from a distance. "This is the 'weapon' you're afraid of, eh?" he loudly taunted, his overwrought grin gaining in menace.
The crack of Marcus' shot rang out through the emptied streets. He hadn't had an appetite for any type of back-and-forth with the freak, but he'd have been lying if he told himself it wasn't fear that had ultimately prompted his trigger finger.
He let his tightened chest free. Perhaps his arrangement with Silco had simply run its course; the very fact that the rabble from the Undercity were becoming this bold as of late was proof of it. He knew well that the Council would only tolerate so much before it would be his own head that was demanded in the wake of all of these recent attacks.
The thoughts continued to pound at his head while he snapped back into action, recoiling from the shot he'd just fired. But, something wasn't right…
He heard his junior officer's gasp before he realized what had happened. The pointy-haired kid remained standing, holding the officer's helmet he'd somehow used to catch Marcus' shot. The kid dangled it before his own face, plucking the collapsed bullet from the dent it had made on impact.
Marcus could only puzzle desperately; he knew he'd aimed for the head…
He released the spent shell and prepared to thumb in another cartridge, breathing quickly.
"Shoot hi—" he began at the junior officer, who promptly fell backwards with a thud before Marcus could finish uttering the command. The dented officer's helmet ricocheted off the young man's face at speed, leaving broken bone and blood in its wake.
It all had happened in the blink of an eye. Marcus almost couldn't bring himself to turn again; a baser instinct within him was telling him to run.
The fear had begun to compound by the time he'd reloaded and peeled his eyes back toward his attacker. It must have been written on his face, and it seemed to amuse the devil-haired kid to no end; his smile flashed briefly before he lowered himself and continued to stalk Marcus down, like a predator would its prey. His irises glinted like golden medallions against the light of the setting sun, making him look like an animal.
Marcus mustered all the fortitude he could to raise his rifle once more and attempt a shot, but the outcome felt predetermined; the moment he made a move, the kid was upon him, without even a moment to blink.
'Has to be one of those Shimmer-infused abominations,' he thought in resignation, as he was knocked to ground, the air leaving his lungs.
He felt utterly powerless; the kid sent the weapon careening across the pavement and deftly pinned down Marcus' limbs, leaning over his fallen prey, gloating.
"This is all the welcome party I get, eh?" he snarled. "Even if all of you had ganged up on me, you couldn't kill me…"
Marcus wondered for a moment whether he'd be reasoned with; whether there was yet any way for him to make it out alive.
"Who… the hell are you?" was all he managed.
The kid flashed his unpleasant smile again.
"I don't know why you all call yourselves peacekeepers…" he gnashed, ignoring his question. "There ain't ever gonna be peace until you've all got somethin' real to fear…"
Marcus' ears pricked up to the sound of voices heading their way. It must have been his backup; if he could only distract him…
The kid's reaction was instant, his poised hand appearing where it wasn't before.
Marcus' vision turned black.